The argument, "The chance that I ended up alive
is so incredibly small I cannot imagine it. Therefore I should be glad and
grateful to be alive and to be able to die. Better to exist and die than never
to exist."

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never
going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who
could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day
outnumber the sand grains of Arabia.” Richard Dawkins in Unweaving the Rainbow.

Many find those lines comforting and feel a drive to appreciate and enjoy life
better.

But is the argument logical? What if it is not? It is logical to believe it even
if it is not as long as it makes us feel better. Logic does not require us to be
cold and unfeeling. It is logical to feel. Feeling it does not imply any
repudiation of logic.

It tells us to be happy we are alive and separately to be happy for the
experiences that life brings us. The two are not the same thing though they are
related.

Some feel that the text should tell us to be glad we exist and are alive and is
not telling us to be grateful.

But what if you are an atheist and think no God planned your existence? Now you
do not need a person to be grateful to in order to be grateful. You are grateful
to your watch when it starts working again. In fact gratitude of that kind is
very basic. What matters is having gratitude. It does not matter as much if you
are grateful to a person or an event or thing. If you are so grateful in life
that you feel it towards things that will only smooth the way to and enhance
your gratitude to people. There are more things to be grateful to than people in
day to day life.

Some feel that gratitude is how you feel when you win some good that you feel
you do not deserve. But as you don’t always get the good you deserve it is
possible to deserve something and still be grateful for it.

What kind of gratitude matters to us most of the time? It is probably getting
blessings we feel we do not deserve.

What kind of gratitude matters most to us in principle? It is probably getting
blessings we do not deserve for it is better to just get blessings than to have
to work for them.

Life is undeserved whether there is a God or not. God cannot give you existence
because you deserve it. So we should feel grateful and that gratitude should
matter to us more than anything. It unites the believer and the atheist. And the
believer should treasure it above even God.

Thus the blessing of life will matter more to us than the blessings that come
within life. Having life matters more than what you will get in life.

Death then can be be turned into a blessing if you see yourself as being lucky
in being able to live at all. Better to live and die than never live at all. You
are grateful for the day at the beach though you know it will end and you end up
being glad it has an end for that makes it feel special. And so it is with life.

Perhaps having too much control over how long you live and the quality of life
you have will be a bad thing for you will take it for granted and you will lose
out on the beauty of gratitude.

Whether you believe in God or not, you have to believe that you are here by
luck, indescribable luck. Personal identity is more fluid than most people see
which means you are literally not the same person you were when you were ten.
This does not affect your sense of gratitude. Thus it is more powerful than
anything life throws at you. Let it be God to you not God.

A Reason to Die?

You don’t need to die any more than you need to breathe.
Dying is not about needing to die. It just happens and does not care what you
need or want. It will pave the way for others to live and for others to break
their hearts over you. But that just happens and it does not intend it. Nothing
intends death. No one intends it which is the very reason we have to
oppose death 100%. Religion makes people feel an irrational need for a
reason to die and seeks to give them one. That could be the reason why religious
nations and religious people are prone to start war and fight. To give yourself
a reason to die is also to give others a reason to in the sense that it will
influence how you see the death of others.

Death may be natural but what has natural to do with
making it acceptable? Not a thing! Most people argue that it is
right to die for it is natural but that is dangerous and unnecessary view.
It is unintelligent though many atheists and most religionists favour it.
You have to find other reasons to help you face the inevitable.